Flip this Loft, Moldy Bread, and Keeping Promises

I think most all of us at some point have our experience getting scammed. Mine came at the end of my freshmen year, I refer to it as "Flip this Loft."

A guy calling himself "Student Stow-Away" offered to take lofts, store them for the summer, and return them in the fall. So I entrusted my really sweet loft (designed and built by my roommate's dad who was the kind of guy who could build or fix anything) only to never see it again. That was something like a $50 deposit and $150 worth of materials.

Probably some kid at UCLA ended up with it. I hope you got splinters.

I was ticked. And I certainly didn't feel like I owed Student Stow-Away the rest of the money for the storage of my loft that I never got back again.

But apparently, God feels differently.

In Joshua 9, the Gibeonites hear about the decisive and miraculous victory of the Israelites at Jericho. They heard the walls came a-tumblin' down, and they wanted no part of war with Israel.

So they sent a delegation, looking all beat-up and worn and ragged, with moldy bread and cracked wineskins. They claim to come from a distant country and ask to make a peace treaty. The passage says that they "sampled the provisions but did not inquire of the Lord." They signed the treaty.

Three days later, they discover that Gibeon isn't really all that far away and that they'd been scammed. Flip this peace treaty.

But just a few verses later, the Gibeonites are under attack. And they call on Israel to honor the peace treaty that was signed under false pretenses. And God commands them to honor the treaty, and they go and wipe out the armies set against Gibeon.

There's a Psalm somewhere that reads "blessed is the one who swears to their own hurt." I heard someone explain that to mean that we are blessed when we are willing to stick with our promises and our covenants, even and especially when we stand by them when it's inconvenient, painful, or costly.

This is a difficult and prophetic word to us in our culture where the customer is always right and personal preference reigns supreme.

I'm still not sure that I needed to pay Student Stow-Away the remainder of the contracted cost for a loft that never re-appeared. But I think that the call to follow through on promises, even at great personal cost, is one that I need to take much more seriously.

And hey, UCLA kid that ended up with my loft--sorry about the splinter comment. Just still a little bitter.